Has anyone else here fallen in like with researching their family history, for its own reward? As in not what the Mormon church plans to do with any of our ancestral records or our own. But for our own personal family hisSTORY.

It's a trip down Memory Lane, historical places, events, and chapters in our country's history, our family's history, and our own.

I used to find it very boring, even insufferable as a young adult. Now as I get older and facing my own mortality as that of some of my loved ones, it has become richly satisfying to appreciate what little I've been able to discover as the years roll by. The family tree no longer looks like blank faces w/names staring back at me, but has regenerated with the passing seasons of life as their narratives have taken form.

:)

Mega dittos.

Gatorman

There is a great reward in finding some of your lost relatives. Adoptees find parents, children find their family members they did not know (mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, etc.), cousins unite for the first time. Some have books and lots of history on family names back many generations.

There is something innate, I believe,in wanting to know your history. I had my DNA analyzed at Ancestry. com and the results have been surprising, to say the least. Thousands and thousands of people have done the same thing. I thought I knew my heritage, but I only knew a tiny part. Connecting up with others on the site has given me a lot more info to share with my family.
There is a desire to remember our heritage in our family. One daughter made a little booklet about my mother this year. I have booklets for several members of my family both on my husband's side and mine.

This may be the year I will get my DNA done too. Been looking at companies online and there are only several. Ancestry is one of the more popular ones. There's others like FamilyTree that's supposed to be pretty good, and does a mitochondrial DNA analysis for women only, and then a separate one for the males.

Nice thing about Ancestry and some others are once you have your results you can match them up not only on their website but other websites where sharing DNA information is encouraged to maximize your results.

Preparing personal biographies of your loved ones is an excellent way to preserve family history for posterity. My grandpa left one on our Mormon side, and I'm so glad he did! It's like he left a hologram of himself by leaving that for his children and those who came after.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 02:55PM by Amyjo.

I find some genealogy to be worthwhile to study. But when you come from a family that is conflicted it's troublesome. The one side (mormon side) profiteered off of murdering Indians and putting the blame on the US army, the other side (catholic side) were dirt poor, born bastards, and lived off selling bootleg whiskey with prostitutes.

I'm not sure how to get fired up and proud about genealogy. especially the Mormon dead dunking my degenerate ancestors?

anyone have a family like this?

poopstone Wrote:
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> I find some genealogy to be worthwhile to study.
> But when you come from a family that is conflicted
> it's troublesome. The one side (mormon side)
> profiteered off of murdering Indians and putting
> the blame on the US army, the other side (catholic
> side) were dirt poor, born bastards, and lived off
> selling bootleg whiskey with prostitutes.
>
> I'm not sure how to get fired up and proud about
> genealogy. especially the Mormon dead dunking my
> degenerate ancestors?
>
> anyone have a family like this?

For me, getting over some of my hangups about my genealogy were similar to some of yours, regarding some of the early LDS history and some relatives who fall into the "degenerate camp" on the LDS side. Not all do however.

Once you can get back further than the LDS generations you get into earlier chapters of your family history. Like two of my ggggrandparents. The husband was bodyguard to Joey Smith, courier, etc. That by itself was a colorful history, even though he was on the wrong side of history IMO. He himself lived an honorable life from what I've gathered. He died before could make the trek west, as his body gave out from suffering heavy persecution from being forced to move several times over during the harsh winter months in Illinois, and Missouri, and other states. His wife smoked a pipe! Picture a Mormon mother of 12 children during Joey Smith's reign, toking away on her pipe tobacco. It may have helped her to keep her sanity! Both of their fathers fought in the Revolutionary War. Neither men were LDS to my knowledge.

Another of my direct ancestors through the Mormon (paternal) lineage was a sister to a direct ancestor on my mother's side - and both sisters to a brother who was a direct ancestor of George Washington. LOLOL. I would never have guessed that in a million years, or that my parents were distant cousins by however many degrees had I not researched my ancestry. :)

Dad's side was through Mormon lineage, while my mom's was through Protestant lineage. And yet the dots connect up eventually to where even they were related long before they were ever conceived. :D

It just becomes fun after you get hooked on it. I've met two Jewish cousins who are both avid genealogists. One started in her 50's, and the other she got him to start while in his 60's. They both became lovers of family history albeit neither one of them started out a genealogist. It seems to attract some of us as we get older, like myself and my Jewish cousins.

That's the fun thing about it, is it doesn't get boring when you are learning history as you go, and finding stories you didn't know about until you get started. :)

The best genealogist I've found on my dad's Mormon side wasn't even a Mormon in life. He was a lifelong Deist, who descended from the same ancestor who was a bodyguard to Joey. He left volumes of family history - literally volumes. He was a direct descendant through his side (somewhere,) of Pocahontas, though that wasn't on the same side as ours. And a descendant of Thomas Jefferson.

The guy wasn't LDS but puts many of our Mormon genealogy records to shame with all the excellent work he did during his life. His son takes no interest in it however. But I've been able to access what records he left.

That's another perk of getting started. Once you do you will find other genealogists in your family quite by chance, who are more than happy to assist you in your search. And more likely than not they'll be cousins or other relatives of yours you didn't know you had before. :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 03:23PM by Amyjo.

My ancestry has a branch that comes from Pocahontas as well. I am not entirely convinced of the accuracy of what's found at family search, but many pedigree charts do agree on the Pocahontas thing...but, there are people out in the world wide webby that vehemently disagree with these pedigree charts...

I'd like to corroborate the pedigree charts with un-connected sources.

I am not a fan of genealogy, mostly because I'm lazy. But also because I don't trust people, their motives, their aspirations, and their needs, not too mention their accuracy. Sometimes people see what they want to see.

http://pocahontas.morenus.org/poca_gen.html#.V1DBKW0rKVM



Not that I have anything to be ashamed of, no sir! I am a direct descendant of both Moctezuma AND Hernan Cortez!!

Through Moctezuma, I can trace my way back to Samuel the Lamanite and Laman, but not Lemuel. Really sad about Lemuel, getting the mumps when he was a young teen.

And Zelph, yeah, ggggggranddad Zelph!

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Has anyone else here fallen in like with
> researching their family history, for its own
> reward?

I blame the ghost of Elijah.

:) Elijah says "Boo!"

Don't worry about ancestors a few generations back who did bad things. Remember that you had other ancestors in that generation who were not so bad. And it gets better, the further back you go (more ancestors, twice as many every generation):

You have 4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 g-g-grandparents
32 g-g-g-grandparents
64 ...
128 ...

I love it, always have, and never really made it about the church. It was always about family.

I'm the only exmormon in the family and I'm the only one interested in family history. I just enjoy figuring out how all these people fit into history. I've got lots and lots of Mormon ancestors who crossed the plains. I've got a great great grandfather that worked on the transcontinental railroad. Another gggrandfather sailed around South America to get to California and the gold rush. His wife was one of the first suffragettes in Utah. I have ancestors who were on the Mayflower. I enjoy the personal connection to world events.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 05:34PM by bezoar.

I love genealogy and find that it connects me with history in a deeply personal way.

Some findings: One ancestor lived a few streets over from the home where I lived while attending high school. I had no idea! One lived in the "wilderness" of Connecticut during colonial times. One fought in the same Revolutionary battle that Daniel Boone and Benedict Arnold fought in. Did you know that Daniel Boone's signal to his unit was a turkey warble? And one was a physician (blowing my assumption that my roots were entirely working class.)

My great-grandmother and namesake took in one of her younger, single sisters to live with her. The younger sister made a living as a seamstress.

I love the intimate details of my family's history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 08:14PM by summer.

Found out that Jesse James is my second cousin four times removed.

When I first started doing my family history, I had sent a message on one of the Ancestry.com forum boards to see if I could find some more information about my biological father, and a month later, I was talking to him on the phone.

So far, there is a set of triplets in my tree.

I am slowly working on to see if there is any concrete evidence that will show that Martin Luther, the founder of Lutherism is really a distant grandfather.

Also, Marlin Brando and Steve Tyler of Aerosmith are both in my tree as distant cousins.

One cool site is Relative Finder: https://www.relativefinder.org/#/main

You do have to be signed up with Family Search and have your genealogy entered in there, but it can show your relationship to many famous and historical people.

I like history and genealogy falls into that category for me. A distant cousin in my adopted family published the definitive history of the Burr family 23 years ago. I refer to it often. I used genealogical research done by a distant cousin to find my maternal birth family in 2014.

RB

Ummm. Sorry, but no. Please keep me the hell away from these people I don't even know in the afterlife if they have any blood claims on me. And stay the hell away from my children, blood sucking mormons of the future.

Did I mention I'm an introvert whose choosy about who I deal with?

Can I just hear the stories of who was awesome? Who did you love? That's way more important than who you were related to.

Adoption is big in my family history. On top of polygamy. So hubby and I just had a conversation where he realized, maybe for the first time, that our children (that he watched emerge from my uterus) are the only blood relatives he has ever known - he's adopted.

Is blood thicker than love? Yes and no. Life is complicated.

Love always wins. Always.

Well yeah! Especially love of money.

You mean to tell me that you don't know a man or a woman who chose money over love?